Rebel Souls and Outlaw Hearts
A North and South AU Fanfic
Elkanah Bent/Ashton Main Pairing
By Auburn Red
Disclaimer: I own the members of Ashton and El's gang, the Pinkerton detectives and the bounty hunters. Otherwise, everyone else is from John Jakes and ABC. There are references to real people and they belong to themselves and history. Other cameos will be noted.
Summary: AU for North and South and Love and War, but mostly not Heaven and Hell. Elkanah Bent and Ashton Main have a chance to escape their dashed dreams of their Southern empire, their disgraced names and reputations, and longing for revenge. They take it to get away from the past and live a new life in the West and get all the wealth, power, and excitement that they long for. Of course, wherever these two run, trouble is never far away.
Author's note: What can I say, I love my antagonistic couples and Elkanah Bent and Ashton Main are perfect for each other. They were just too fun and juicy to resist writing a fanfic about. That's what comes from watching North and South and delighting in Phillip Casnoff and Teri Garber's performances as well as listening to songs like "Bad Company" by Bad Company, "Run Away" by Live and Shelby Lynne, "Tire Tracks and Broken Hearts" by Meatloaf and Bonnie Tyler, "Love's a Loaded Gun" by Alice Cooper, "It Ain't Me, Babe" by Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, "Good Run of Bad Luck" by Clint Black, "Riders in the Storm" by The Doors, "Paint It Black" by The Rolling Stones, "Behind Blue Eyes" by The Who, "Desperado" by The Eagles, "Renegade" by STYX, "Ride Like The Wind" by Christopher Cross, and "Blaze of Glory" by Jon Bon Jovi gets.
I want to clear the air that I am not a big Western fan. The only ones I really like are Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Blazing Saddles, Maverick, Young Guns, the Lonesome Dove miniserieses ( except Streets of Laredo), and the short stories, "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" and "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," but I am fascinated with stories about crime and criminals, especially outlaw couples, and thought that I would have fun playing in a genre in which I have never before written.
I am letting you all know that I am an editor and book reviewer so I can only update this every month or so, so other projects will have to take precedence.
Capter One: Ash and Elm
Loaded
April, 1866 Baltimore, Maryland-
The man paced back and forth angrily inside the rooming house in which he was staying. He pounded his forehead in frustration and muttered to himself like an insane person. He felt like a caged animal, snarling in impotent rage but unable to free itself from its prison. Of course, he wasn't in an actual prison, just a metaphorical one stuck inside a limbo in which he was deprived of all of his resources, money, contacts, and above all, a plan. Living without a plan was what scared Elkanah Bent the most.
It was a year since he escaped that firey inferno in the barn that housed all of his dynamite, weapons, and ammunition and he realized that his empire would never be saved. Since then, all Bent was able to do was think, well think and survive.
He resorted to petty thievery for food and shelter, the same type of thievery that he did after he left that Hell Hole that was the poor white trash Bent tobacco farm. Stealing wallets, robbing the occasional couple on the street, stealing petty cash from shops. Hardly the grand schemes of the past like running a blockade to sell luxury goods or attempting to assasinate Jefferson Davis.
He even looked different these days. He was now bearded when he used to be clean shaven. Dressed in old dirty clothing when he used to wear velvet dinner jackets, silk robes, and gentlemenly attire. Drinking whiskey to drown out his anger when he used to drink champagne and wine in social gatherings. Living in a cheap rooming house in the bad part of Baltimore when he lived in a luxury manor in Richmond. Alone, when he used to be surrounded by some of the most influential people of the Confederacy and had the arm of the most beautiful ladies, particularly Ashton Main, the woman whose ambition was rival to his and because of that, he considered her his equal in life and uh-well uh life.
He even lived under a new name for now. Most people believed that Elkanah Bent was dead and for now Bent preferred to keep it that way. Instead, he was Charles Edwards. Bent thought of it as an eternal fuck you to his senator birth father that he now lived under his name. The man who fobbed him off onto those horrible so-called foster parents rather than be tainted with the scandal of fathering a bastard son.
On the one hand, it was somewhat liberating that he had a new name but that meant that he was now deprived of Elkanah Bent's resources, therefore the ability to pull himself out of the muck in which he now lay. The only resource that he had left was his mind and these days he wasn't sure that he could even trust that.
Rage and anger filled his thoughts making it difficult to concentrate. Mostly hatred towards Orry Main and George Hazard, the men who always stood in the way of him achieving even a little bit of success. He wanted to focus, wanted to think, analyze, and create a step by step process on what his next move should be but nothing came to mind. The only thing that he could think of doing was violence.
He thought of a thousand different ways to kill Main and Hazard, but he knew that he couldn't. Not because he had any aversion towards killing. After all, he had racked up quite an impressive kill list, one that began when he was thirteen. (Though technically, his first kill began even earlier than that, when he came out of his birth mother.) He delighted in the bloody images of his enemies since West Point, dead on the ground and laughed at the vision. But no, killing them only destroyed the men. It would only be a short term reprieve that was a momentary satisfaction. It would do nothing to improve Bent's current situation, in fact onlyt make it worse. Bent needed to think long term, but so far he had nothing.
He thought of killing himself, but he considered that to be the ultimate cowardly weakest act. Elkanah Bent was many things, but a coward he was not. Still his body and mind were in such turmoil these days. He began drinking to fill the loss and drank even more, sometimes to collapse. He didn't sleep well, often stirred up with rage and thought. The thoughts were often tangled up and erratic. He wasn't the consummate tactician compared to Napoleon of his West Point days. Instead he was a man who was struggling mightily to hold onto his splintering fatigued mind and his eroding sanity.
The truth was, he was angry but he was also tired. Tired of thinking, tired of planning things that didn't come to fruition, tired of beating his head challenging the machinations of a world that had been against him since birth. He was just so tired. Even though he still considered suicide to be the act of a coward, part of him just wished that he could fall asleep and never wake up.
No, he didn't want to die. He would never do that: give Orry Main nor George Hazard the satisfaction of knowing that they contributed to his demise. He wanted to escape, get away, start all over. He wanted to go away, possibly out west.
The more that he thought about that idea, the better it became. There was plenty of land for the taking, resources that could be used, and a whole world opened up out there that he could explore. Maybe he could create a new empire on the ashes of the old one and get his revenge on the Hazard-Main clans. More importantly, he could be the man of great wealth, importance, and taste of his dreams. But he needed money and capital to get there, things that he was in short supply. If only, he still knew someone who was wealthy and connected, someone like-Then his eyes focused as he looked out the window and down the street across from the boarding house and saw someone that he knew. He grabbed some paper and scribbled a quick note. Then he opened the door to the hallway.
A small blond girl of about nine or ten darted back and forth from room to room. Bent recognized her as the landlady's daughter, Mirabelle Johnson. She often ran errands for the boarders. Bent whistled to get her attention and motioned her forward. He gave her a friendly smile, inwardly relieved that his famous Bent charm did not go to waste in the year of failure and self pity. "Hey there, Miss Mirabelle."
Mirabelle smiled, the gaps in her two front teeth were clearly visible. "Hey there, Mr. Edwards," she said.
"I need someone to do me a favor and I would love for that person to have sharp eyes and a keen sense of observation, would you do me the honor?"
The girl giggled at the grown up's flattery. "What do I have to do, Mr. Edwards?"
Bent beckoned for her to follow him and he waved at the window. "Look out there, do you see that pretty lady across the street, the one with the dark curly hair?"
Mirabelle nodded. "Yes sir," she said.
"Well, I need you to give her this note and send her here." He held up a silver coin. "If you agree to do this, I will give you this coin for now and another when you come back with her." It wouldn't be much, less than a silver dollar, but Bent knew that she couldn't resist some coin that she could later use to buy penny candy and hair ribbons.
"Okay, Mr. Edwards," she said.
"Atta girl," Bent said. He patted her on the head then put the note and the coin in her hands.
Ashton Main stood in the corner having just left her latest client and waited for another one. She died every night and now she was forced to come alive so she can die once more. That was how she thought of her activities these days. No emotion, no excitement, just cold deadness.
She remembered her days seducing those graduates at West Point and her time practically flaunting her affairs in front of her former husband. Now, all she had were her beauty and her ability to have sex with men. She once lived for that excitement and thrill, but now it was a matter of going through the motions, just accepting money and surviving. There was a difference between the thrill of wanting to have affairs with multiple men and having to for money. Like a person choosing to stay home because they are agoraphobic and having to stay home because they are under quarantine.
Not that she had much to feel alive for. She had nighttime lovers, money from prostitution, and lived, but that was it. She only tried to return to Mount Royal once since the War ended and her and El's dreams fell apart. She managed to escape with her life, but that was it. Orry made that clear. Should she return to the plantation, he would forget that she was his sister and kill her. Ashton had no doubt that he would, nor did she have any doubt that the Hazard family would not give her any warmer a reception seeing as how her goody-goody sister, Brett and her husband, Billy now lived up in Philadelphia.
She tried to see James, but his new wife made it clear that Ashton was not fit to even be on the doorstep let alone in the house. The new Mrs. Huntoon was a forceful, formidable personality in other words, James's idea of a perfect woman. So this was not a conversation that Ashton wanted to have so she left.
Ashton even looked different these days. Gone were the pale skin, voluptuous figure, ornately coiffed hair, and exquisitely styled fashion that was expected of the daughter of wealthy Southern plantation owners and the wife of a prominent Confederate politician. In her place was now a woman with wild scraggly dark hair, a lean hungry figure, and a dirty ragged red dress that left little to the imagination and living in a Yankee city no less. She laughed at the irony. She mocked Madeline LaMotte's late mother for being a half black prostitute and now here Ashton was in a much worse position. At least Madeline's mother was a high price courtesan, Ashton was nothing more than a common street whore with no future. If she were a courtesan, at least she knew it could lead to something more than what she had. Now, she had nothing and was nobody. No wonder she spent most days living like an automaton no past no future, just dead inside.
"Hey," an overweight drunk man stumbled out of the tavern. "Looking for some company tonight, darlin'?" He slobbered, liquor completely spilled down his shirt.
Ashton felt sick. Not with you, she wanted to say, but she knew that if she did, then she wouldn't be eating that night. She still had her famous Southern genteel ladylike demeanor and vulnerability which she could flash in a moment's notice as she did now. "Why I have been looking for a man such as yourself all day." To run away from, she sarcastically thought.
"Well here I am," the man said. Ashton seductively approached him. When she stood next to the man, he roughly pushed her towards him and enveloped her in a big wet sloppy kiss. Ashton barely bit back her revulsion.
"Excuse me miss," a small voice said. Thank Heaven for small favors, Ashton thought as she faced the speaker. She saw a young girl. Real small favors, Ashton wryly thought.
"Sorry kid, we're busy," the man said.
" I was told to find you miss," the girl said.
Secretly, Ashton was relieved for the interruption, but she knew that she also needed the money that this man would provide. She also was confused as to why a small child was trying to get her attention. She laughed. "Look young lady, if your father wants his money back, he should realize that all transactions are final."
The girl looked down sorrowfully. "My father died in the War, miss."
"Tough break kid," the man said. He again shoved Ashton towards him which this time she resisted. "Well I am sorry for that, but why did you need to find me?"
"I'm supposed to give you this," the girl held up a note.
Ashton accepted the piece of paper and read: Ash, Come out of the woods to meet the Elm.
"Who gave this to you?" Ashton asked.
"Mr. Edwards, miss," the girl said.
Ashton didn't know any Mr. Edwards personally. Of course, she didn't know all her client's names and certainly couldn't rule out that this man was using a pseudonym. However, she recognized the handwriting. Could it be? She felt her heart pound through her chest in anticipation. He should be dead, but then again he was very clever and she just knew that he would have an escape plan.
Ashton turned to her client. "Uh, I am going to have to cancel our meeting, I am afraid. I have to visit a sick friend. My apologies."
She ignored the man's protests and his no doubt falling erection as she turned to the young messenger. "Where is this Mr. Edwards?" She asked.
The girl pointed to the building across the street. "Ma's boarding house," she replied. "I'm supposed to take you to him."
"Then by all means lead the way, my dear," Ashton told her.
Mirabelle led Ashton into the boarding house and up the creaky stairs. She knocked on the door as a familiar voice said from inside, "Come in."
The door opened and Ashton felt her heart stop. He had changed and was more bedraggled and weathered like she was, but she would have known him anywhere. She felt that she was staring at a ghost, though technically she was not far off. "El, you're alive," she gasped.
"Barely," Bent answered. He turned to Mirabelle and gave her the other coin. "Thank you, little darling," he said. Mirabelle smiled and skipped off, holding her new treasures.
Ashton and Bent could no longer resist. They both fell into each other and embraced hungrily holding onto each other as the only familiar accepting people that they had seen in a year.
"What happened? You couldn't have possibily escaped that fire. It was like the gates of Hell opened!" Ash asked. They continued to kiss.
"Did you really think that I would fill a barn with explosives, have a lantern and smoke a cigar near it, and not be aware there was a back door with which to make a timely escape?", Bent scoffed. "Give me a little credit."
Ashton nodded. It made sense. "Well it's good to see you, Mr. Edwards. Mr. Edwards, where on Earth did that name come from?"
"It's a name," Bent insisted. "For now, Elkanah Bent is dead. Let's keep it that way. For now, I'm Charles Edwards."
"The name sounds familiar," Ashton pondered.
"It's a common enough name," Bent said. He sighed. "It's the name of a no-account senator from Ohio with whom I used to be familiar." He reached over to kiss her again.
The two disrobed each other and collapsed onto the bed. "Did you know that I was here?", Ashton asked. "Did you have me followed? Is that why you summoned me?"
Bent laughed. Ashton Main Huntoon hadn't changed a bit. She still thought of herself. That was what she was best at. Of course, he was no different. That innate self centerdness made them the perfect pair.
"On the contrary, I was not aware of your presence in this city until I looked out the window and saw you just now. I take it from your general dress and demeanor that you are not exactly in high favor with your family right now."
Ashton rolled her eyes. "Oh, of course I am. Later this evening, I plan to have tea and mint juleps later with my sister and Orry's whore. We're going to bury the hatchet."
Bent ignored her sarcasm for now. "Odds are you think the same as me. You would like to bury it into their skulls."
Ashton smirked and nodded. "So, what's new with the great Emperor Napoleon Bona-bent now? Planning a new assasination attempt perhaps on Andrew Johnson?"
Infuriated, Bent grabbed her neck. "I warned you what would happen if you laughed at me! And no one knows you're here!"
She pushed herself off him. "And I warned you before what would happen if you laid your hands on me in such a way! Anyway, you wouldn't do it. I know you too well, Elkanah Bent! You did not just summon me here to reminisce about old times and for sexual pleasure. I am worth more to you alive than dead! Now what do you want exactly? What is your latest scheme, creating another empire?"
Bent sighed. "I'm through with that. I am through with playing by rules and laws in which I am not a part."
Ashton was confused and sardonic. "Wait, where was I when we were playing by rules and laws?"
Bent ignored. "I can't be the head of a government which has cut me down at every turn. I can't lead fools like your brother and George Hazard, people who seek to undermine me and yet society seeks to reward them and leave me with nothing! If the laws aren't going to work for me, then I guess they don't apply to me neither!
"So what's the scheme now, El?" Ashton inquired.
He motioned his head towards the West. "It's a big world out there. Plenty of men and woman desperate to take what they can get. I am going to get a gang together and we do some illicit activities, robberies, burglery, theft whatever it takes. They do their jobs and I get my cut. I will make the Elkanah Bent Gang one of the most feared names ever!"
"So instead of becoming the President of the New Confederacy, you want to be the King of the Underworld. I suppose you need a queen. Instead of Napoleon and Josephine, we are now Hades and Persephone."
"But I want you for more than half the year," Bent kissed her. "My first lady and consort once more-?"
"-No," Ashton insisted. "I don't want to be your consort! I want to be your partner. If I take part, we divide the share and leadership equally or this empire falls as quickly as your last one!"
"You are hardly under any position to negotiate terms," Bent snapped.
"I am hardly under any position to do anything," Ashton said. "I have lived in the lowest pit for a year and one thing I have learned is that I will no longer let a man lead me! I always had the brains to lead. I just have had to use them more often lately!"
"Suppose I refuse," Bent said.
"Then you shouldn't have told me what you are planning,"Ashton said. "And you should not have told me that Elkanah Bent is still alive."
"It's going to be a rough road," Bent argued. "You won't get a moment's peace."
"You promise?" Ashton said seductively.
Bent had to admit, Ashton Main would make a good addition to his gang. She would make a good honey trap for any wayward rich man or nosy official and her resourcefulness and ability to plan was second only to his. Many a time, he thought that he would have done better to make Ashton his Vice President in his planned New Confederacy rather than her weak willed idiot of an ex-husband, James Huntoon. Ashton and Bent knew too much about each other and they didn't trust each other, which oddly enough made them completely trustworthy. He had to admit that he was beginning to like the sound of the name The Bent-Main Gang. It had a nice ring to it. "We can talk about that later. Right now, I have a more short term task for you."
"Which is-?"
Bent waved his hand around the room. "You will notice that I am not myself living in luxury right now. I need a bit of immediate capital and that is where you come in."
"You want me to sleep with someone so you can rob them blind?" She asked.
"Well if you are of the persuasion to sleep with your brother, I am not about to stop you," Bent said wryly.
Ashton gagged. "Eww, what the hell-Are you serious?" Upon Bent's grin, she realized that he was teasing, she hoped. She playfully slapped him across the shoulder. "Oh you!" Then what he actually proposed sunk in. "You want me to go to Mount Royal and sneak you inside to commit burglery."
"Among other things," Bent said. "Their type always seems the sorts to forgive a reformed sinner. You go back home, all pious and penitent and as soon as you gain their trust, you will hear a knock at the door and let in the Big Bad Wolf."
Ashton considered. "And you won't just stop with robbing my brother will you?" As if to confirm her suspicion, Bent took bullets out of a desk and started loading his gun methodically and with a deadly silence. "Well I can tell you this much that it won't work. Mount Royal practically has a shot on sight declaration should I reappear."
Bent looked at his girlfriend quizzically and she answered. "You don't think I tried? They threatened to kill me should I return, so did the second Mrs. Huntoon."
"Well then we could both break in, take care of him, steal his goods," Bent suggested savagely.
"Oh please start your life of crime with a murder that is easy to trace and makes you a very easy target." Ashton said sarcastically, pointing out the obvious hole in his plan. "Think about it, if either Orry Main or George Hazard turn up mysteriously murdered, who do you think they would investigate?" She touched her chin with deep thought. "Hmm, I think it's going to be the one who has schemed against them for years!"
"It has to be done," Bent declared.
"Why can't you just rob a bank around here where no one knows who you are and then go out West and start all over," Ashton suggested.
"I need to have my vengeance on them for all that they have done against me," Bent practically shouted. "After they undermined me, conspired against me, betrayed me, have been my enemies since West Point-!"
Ashton rolled her eyes during his rant that she heard repeatedly ad nauseum and then shouted. "Oh shut up about West Point! No one cares, not half as much as you do!"
"You weren't there!" Bent declared.
"No I have been here and elsewhere listening to you rant and rave about it," Ashton mocked. "What's more is you aren't there either!" Bent reddened in fury, but Ashton continued. "Do you want to know why you are here stuck in this rooming house and why your dreams never came to fruition? It's because you are stuck in the past! The only power that Orry Main and George Hazard have over you is the power you give them by letting them live in your mind! You will never have a future if you keep dwelling on things that happened to you some twenty years ago! Let it go and get away from the past or you are going to buried underneath the rubble of your faded empire!"
Bent slammed his gun shut and stared at Ashton in deadly silence. She stared defiant wondering how he was going to react. She practically grinned at the irony that Orry might thank her one day for saving his life.
Bent aimed his pistol at her and Ashton winced for a tense second. Of course, her life may not be saved. He uncocked the gun and pointed at the door. "We need to be in a more secluded area." He nodded at the door. "Come on." He stood up and bade her to follow. Ashton gulped, but followed him.
Ashton and Bent did not say anything until they approached a secluded spot in a nearby wood. Bent aimed the gun at Ashton once again. "You want to partner up with me and you talk to me as you just did," he said. "You want to prove that you can be an outlaw, then you go there and you prove it!" He pointed the gun at himself.
"I won't shoot you," Ashton said.
"I don't expect you to," Bent said. He laid down a pair of whiskey bottles on top of a fallen tree and pointed his gun at them. "You are going to learn how to shoot!"
"I've barely shot a gun before," Ashton said.
"That is all too painfully obvious," Bent pointed out. "You are going to now!"
"I have always got someone to shoot for me," Ashton said.
"Not anymore, now shoot," Bent said. "Keep your eye on the target and both eyes open."
Ashton hit a tree far from the bottles. Bent glared at her.
"I'm sorry," Ashton said. "I have always had trouble with my aim!"
"That may be true," Bent declared. "But there will be tons of lawmen who are good at their aim and will not hesitate as you just did, again!"
Ashton shot again and missed again. "Do it now!" He said.
"Stop yelling at me," Ashton pouted.
This time, Bent was furious. "I don't have time to wait for you to grow up! Get this through your skull, you are not the helpless daughter of the manor anymore and you are not the pampered wife of James Huntoon! You want to be my partner, then you put in your equal share to this organization! I am not carrying your useless weight along! If we get caught, I will not allow you to tell the authorities that you had no part it in it! Now shoot, woman shoot!"
Ashton aimed and shot. This time she managed to fire the pistol right under a bottle. She was beginning to sympathize with Bent's cadets at West Point under his rule. Bent screamed right into her face. "Listen to me, no one will always be there to shoot for you! You cannot be dependent on others, this year should have taught you that! No one is going to save you, you have to save yourself! You cannot just reap the benefits of a partnership. You do the work yourself or you don't do it all!"
Ashton let out a gutteral scream and shot at the bottle. The bullet shattered the bottle. "I did it," she said excited. She fired at the next bottle blasting it sky high. Bent and Ashton whooped with delight and embraced. "I broke them all!"
"Good but firing against unmoving bottles is one thing. Firing against the living, now that's quite another." Bent walked away in front of Ashton.
Still furious at Bent's taunts, Ashton shot the final bullet. It landed on the ground near his boots. Bent jumped back in surprise.
"Don't ever talk that way to me again," Ashton said coldly blowing the smoke on the gun. Bent had to admit that he was impressed by how fast a learner she was.
The couple checked into a hotel outside of Baltimore. "Mr. And Mrs. Charles and Lucinda Edwards," the desk clerk said.
"No Miss Edwards," Ashton said. "I'm his sister, not his wife. We get that a lot."
The clerk sighed and gave them the keys to their room. "Sister?" Bent inquired as they approached their room.
Ashton laughed. "Hoteliers get mighty suspicious when a man and woman claim to be married without proof." She showed her bare fingers. "I have been someone's sister, cousin, daughter, many times. I was even someone's granddaughter once"
"And Lucinda?" Bent asked.
"I have always loved that name," Ashton answered. "I had a doll with that name that I had a lot of good memories of, especially when I stole her from Brett."
A few hours later, the two emerged from the hotel, their guns subtly hidden. "Are you ready," Bent asked.
Ashton was nervous, but prepared. "I'm ready."
Bent held Ashton's hand into his and kissed her closed hand. "Josephine," he whispered.
"Napoleon," Ashton answered.
"Let's go," Bent said as the two mounted horses and were ready to rob a bank.
A customer held open the door of the First National Bank of Baltimore as the couple entered. He greeted them in a friendly manner as he stepped out of the way to let them enter. They waited until the door closed, then they held out their guns. Bent said, "This is a stick up," Bent said. When no one heard him, he spoke louder. "This is a stick up!"
This time the employees and customers reacted in a panic facing the man and woman with loaded gun. "Now, get on the ground and freeze while my lovely partner and I help ourselves!" The duo held open empty bags and approached customers as they put their cash inside. Then they approached the tellers who gave them their money. Both Ashton and Bent aimed their guns as they backed out onto the street.
The duo jumped into their horses as one of the employees ran out of the bank and flagged down a pair of police officers. "No one ever said life was free of complications," Bent muttered under his breath as he shot the employee and one officer dead.
The other officer ran towards Ashton and grabbed the reins of her horse. "Let go of me," she commanded. "Let go!" Without thinking, she took her pistol and shot the man in the face, his blood splattered onto her face, hands, and dress.
Ashton was momentarily stunned but Bent's insistence "Come on," broke her free and she followed him.
The two kept riding at top speed until they reached a rural area where their pursuers lost them on the trail. Bent stopped his horse along the banks of a creek. "We stop here," he said. Ashton obeyed. Bent reached down into the water and washed his hands and face swallowing huge gulps of water. Ashton shook as she timorously and delicately cleaned the blood off her hands. When she stopped, she crouched down like a statue not moving, thinking, or feeling. She felt numb.
She couldn't move for a few seconds until she saw a white cloth dangle over her eyes. She looked up to see Bent holding a handkerchief. "Here, for your face and dress." She mechanically took the handkerchief and cleaned up.
Later that night, the two slept in the same bed. Bent awoke to see Ashton sitting and facing the window. "Ashton," Bent asked. "Ash?"
"I didn't even know him, but I can't get his face out of my mind," Ashton said. "When he grabbed my horse, I just could see myself floating out of my body. All I could think of was that it was us or them, us or them and I shot him. I killed somebody."
"You did right," Bent assured her.
"He is a nobody and I can't get him out of my head," she said. "I felt sick to my stomach just now and became ill. I can't stop shaking. Why can't I stop thinking about someone I don't even know?"
"It was your first kill," Bent said.
"Maybe, I am just a cowardly weakling," Ashton scoffed. "You'd do better if you leave me here, someone who panics over killing a man that she doesn't even know."
Bent sighed and pulled Ashton closer to him laying her head on his chest. "When I was thirteen years old, my parents had left for the evening to a revival putting me in charge of the farm. They thought it was some sort of punishment that I wasn't supposed to come along, but what those two sorry individuals failed to realize was that anytime they left was a celebration for me. While they were gone, this crazed bearded mad man broke into the house and started looting. He escaped from a nearby prison and was looking for food, valuables, anything. I was afraid of that man, but I was more afraid of my father if he returned and found that they were robbed. I picked up my father's gun from the mantle and aimed it at the stranger."
"You killed him," Ashton asked.
Bent scoffed. "My hands shook so much that I couldn't pull the trigger. The stranger grabbed the gun and at first I thought that he was going to shoot me, but instead he hit me with the blunt end and knocked me over the head with it. He wasn't going to kill me, he just ran off. He even left the gun. When my parents returned, they were of course furious. They accused me of stealing food, which was not surprising. One of their favorite methods of punishment was to withhold food from me, sometimes locking me in the barn with my wrists and ankles manacled, deprived of food for three days until I confessed to whatever it was bad thing I had done or didn't do. I got real good at stealing food and not get caught, mostly. But this time, I was innocent and they didn't believe me. I had done everything right, even got injured in the process, and my father still waled on me with his belt. Something in me snapped, so for the second time I took that gun down. This time my hands didn't shake.
My mother screamed her head off calling me demon spawn who was a curse to be born and that I should return to the Hell that I came from. Well, I silenced her too. I accidentally tripped over a lantern and set the farm on fire. I ran from the Bent farm and never returned."
"You killed your own parents," Ashton said.
Bent laughed bitterly. "They weren't my real parents, I was fostered to them. They made that clear as if their fair hair and light complexion and my dark hair and dark eyes weren't enough of a give away. I had the name they said, but I was not theirs. My foster mother worked as a midwife in Ohio when she found a motherless newborn and an opportunity. My real mother as far as I knew was touched in the head and died birthing me. My father was not her husband. My foster mother blackmailed him so she and her husband could get their Georgia farm back from creditors. He also paid them every month so they would tell no one. They couldn't afford to have slaves work the farm so they had the next best thing. They had a small child who earned his keep by working his fingers to the bone, was treated lower than any slave, bullied by his foster brothers and sister, beaten within an inch of his life by his adopted father, ignored except as a source of income by his adopted mother, and could never be fired or sold.
All my birth father did was send them money. It wouldn't do for his reputation to be saddled with a bastard son when he was a family man-"
"-No account senator from Ohio," Ashton finished.
"Who told you?" Bent asked.
"Right now you just did," Ashton said. "When I told you that my brother and George Hazad called you Bent the Bastard, you carried an expression on your face not like it was a useless insult but that it was the truth and they knew or rather you assumed they did."
Bent didn't answer but so Ashton continued. "So how did you get to West Point?"
"My birth father," Bent replied. "After my foster parent's deaths, I walked from Georgia to Ohio and asked to be taken in. He refused and wanted nothing to do with me. He had also heard about what happened at the Bent Farm and I think was afraid of the monster that he helped create. I said fine if you don't want me, then let me go to West Point and join the military. My foster brothers became farmers and my sister a maid, but that wasn't enough for me. I was better than those stupid quarrelsome hayseeds! All I ever read was about political and military history. I wanted to be a soldier or a statesman. So the Senator managed to declare what happened at the Bent Farm a tragic accident caused by an unknown intruder, then he paid for me to attend the military academy and West Point. I suppose he figured that anger and pride that I possessed could be turned inward to something useful to serve my country. It worked pretty well for me. I managed to become one of the youngest drill master cadets until certain parties that we both know arrived. The rest you know.
"Ashton, the only reason that I am telling you all of is that I had more reason to hate Nathaniel and Almira Bent more than anybody in the entire world and that includes your brother and George Hazard. But after I killed them, I couldn't sleep for days. I couldn't hold down food and my hands couldn't stop shaking. I hated them and I still felt remorse that I killed them.
Ash, what I am telling you is that you are going to feel that your first time, the regret, guilt, remorse when it comes to killing. The fear of judgement. The second time, you may have a few sleepless nighged ts. But, you'll get over it. The third, you'll be numb to it. It will always be you or them. You may even crave it, long for it. I won't leave you for feeling like this after the first time for something that happens to everyone. But I am telling you right now, there will be more killing and you will have to make that choice time and again. It will always be us or them, one day maybe you or me. If you don't have the stomach for it, then you leave right now, right this second and I say nothing about your involvement."
Ashton slowly rose her head and put her hands on her boyfriend's lips. She then sank down and kissed his chest as if as an answer. The two made love.
They did not express sympathy for each other, because they couldn't. They did not whisper useless platitudes like "It will be alright," because they knew that it wasn't. They did not say they loved each other because they were pretty certain people like them were incapable of such emotion. They just held each other like the last two people embracing in a world that had ended. But they took what they had from each other. For the first time in a year, Elkanah Bent slept soundly knowing that he had a plan for the future. Also for the first time in a year, Ashton Main felt truly alive.
Without saying anything, they also knew that the road ahead was going to get a lot more dangerous and deadly from there on out.